I meet a Kent bookseller two or three times a season at the Canterbury ground and can ask him about Wright if you like - not sure when that will be though.

I have that Clif Cary book as well. Unusual I thought, not a typical tour/series type book, it basically summarised the series with reference to each of the leading players.

Thats what I liked about it. Tour books that merely repeat the stats with just a bit of comments are not great fun. Cary comes out as someone who clearly was a very good student of the game. Unfortunately one doesn't find any other book by him. Any idea if there is ?

Ah I was waiting for that reaction. I know thats not a very popularly held opinion but he was very very good. A bit stubborn and extremely jinxed. He could easily have had twice the wickets in the tests ha played. People stopped counting the number of catches dropped of his bowling and they say the number of times the ball seemed to miss the stumps by the coat of varnish was tragic.

It finally came to a stage where he started believing he was jinxed and wouldn't get wickets. He was much better than his figures seem to suggest.

Ah I was waiting for that reaction. I know thats not a very popularly held opinion but he was very very good. A bit stubborn and extremely jinxed. He could easily have had twice the wickets in the tests ha played. People stopped counting the number of catches dropped of his bowling and they say the number of times the ball seemed to miss the stumps by the coat of varnish was tragic.

It finally came to a stage where he started believing he was jinxed and wouldn't get wickets. He was much better than his figures seem to suggest.

Yes, if England had their way they would have asked Bosanquet to keep his bosie to himslef

You know Godfrey Evans played first class cricket from 1939 well into the 1960's. In his book Behind the Stumps, he gives a squad of 14 from all the players he has played with or against. Here it is

Hutton

Morris

Bradman (Capt)

Worrell

Compton

Weekes

Hammond

Nourse

Miller

Tallon

Lindwall

Bedser

Wright

Ramadhin

Its amazing how many people write of Douglas Wright's great bowling in an innings where he seems to have had next to no rewards. Here is what Evans writes in one place of Wright's bowling in a Test in Australia in 1946-47 . . .

It was during that mammoth Australian total I saw the finest spell of bowling that Doug Wright has ever sent down. If you look at the records of that match, you may not think so, for Doug took only one wicket for 169. But had you been where I was, behind the stumps, you would have appreciated that great effort.

Doug bowled 46 eight ball overs and he put everything he had into every ball. I watched the batsmen play at those balls and either miss them or get a hard edge which would just miss the slips. Times out of number they would play forward to Doug's googly and the ball would cock up between the two short legs. If Doug had taken six or seven wickets instead of just that one it would have been no more than he deserved.

Clif Cary writes in his book :-

It is impossible to judge the ability of any cricketer on a tabulated set of figures; to endeavour to do so in the case of Wright would be to perpeterate grave injustice, because digits can not tell the story of the bad luck that trailed him from one end of australia to the other. Never a match went by in which he did not hopelessly defeat the defences of the leading run getters. Times out of number he had Barnes, Bradman, Hassett and their like groping forward hypnotised by the magic of his spinning witchcraft, but Wright is not a spoilt child of fortune. The ball would either miss the stumps by the width of a cigarette paper, be edged uppishly, then dropped, or just fall short of eager hands, while the straight one would fizz through, find the pads, but not the umpire's affirmative nod. Poor Wright. I think everyone in Australia was on his side; they laughed and jokingly barracked his peculiar hopping, floating run, but they recognised him as a genius, skilled in bowling science, with just that something lacking which would have made him a world beater, for Australia's players to swear at and rail against.